Ambitious climate mitigation policies face social and political resistance. One reason is that existing policies insufficiently capture the diversity of relevant insights from the social sciences about potential policy outcomes. We argue that agent-based models can serve as a powerful tool for integration of elements from different disciplines. Having such a common platform will enable a more complete assessment of climate policies, in terms of criteria like effectiveness, equity and public support.
EPOC Working Paper No. 10 / Work Package 01
2023 / Tommaso Di Francesco, Cars Hommes
Sentiment-Driven Speculation in Financial Markets with Heterogeneous Beliefs: a Machine Learning approach
Public acceptability of carbon taxation depends on its revenue use. Which single or mixed revenue use is most appropriate, and which perceptions of policy effectiveness and fairness explain this, remains unclear. It is, moreover, uncertain how people’s prior knowledge about carbon taxation affects policy acceptability. Here we conduct a survey experiment to test how distinct revenue uses, prior knowledge, and information provision about the functioning of carbon taxation affect policy perceptions and acceptability. We show that spending revenues on climate projects maximises acceptability as well as perceived fairness and effectiveness. A mix of different revenue uses is also popular, notably compensating low-income households and funding climate projects. In addition, we find that providing information about carbon taxation increases acceptability for unspecified revenue use and for people with more prior tax knowledge. Furthermore, policy acceptability is more strongly related to perceived fairness than to perceived effectiveness.
EPOC Working Paper No. 07 / Work Package 01
2023 / M. Alperen Yasar
Power struggles and gender discrimination in the workplace
There is an ongoing discussion about the effectiveness of carbon pricing, with a strong division between optimists and pessimists. A recent review study by Lilliestam, Patt and Bersalli (2021) of the impact of carbon pricing on low-carbon innovation and deep carbonization concludes that there is no evidence for such an impact. We evaluate this study and identify various shortcomings of it, which together cast strong doubts on its main conclusion. Instead, we conclude, based on the studies reviewed by the authors and additional, overlooked literature, that carbon pricing has had a small but positive and significant effect on low-carbon innovation. Our evaluation provides lessons for undertaking a systematic and objective review of research on this topic. Since the main goal of carbon pricing is changing choices by firms and consumers that affect carbon emissions, we also point the reader towards recent evidence for the broader effectiveness of carbon pricing.
EPOC Working Paper No. 06 / Work Package 02
2023 / Catarina Midões, Enrica De Cian, Malcolm Mistry, Giacomo Pasini, Sara Pesenti
Advancing our knowledge of the environment- wellbeing relationship
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